718 THE CENTENNIAL OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. 



terms and of explaining its rules by examples borrowed from tlie best 

 writers. The dictionary advanced slowly, it is true, but tbis very 

 slowness constituted its strength. The various readings which it 

 recorded were all judged and adapted to the times before receiving 

 official confirmation. 



The dictionary itself is the whole French Academy. To our lan- 

 guage, essentially flexible and full of life, which readily adapts itself 

 to the expression of every new sentiment and new thought, and which 

 suffices, without neologisms, for the exposition and demonstration of 

 scientific discoveries, it gives all the solidity and the majesty of the two 

 languages which have successively formed the incarnation of Greece 

 and of Eome. 



Louis XIV was desirous that there should be a language of Louis 

 XIV, as there had been a language of Pericles and a language of 

 Augustus, and he claimed for himself the honor of this idea when he 

 said: "The encouragement of letters and of fine arts, having always 

 contributed to the splendor of nations, the late King, our revered lord 

 and father, ordered the establishment of the French Academy in 1635, 

 in order to bring language, eloquence, and poetry to that point of per- 

 fection which it has at last reached under our reign." 



I am not disposed to insist; I simply state what Louis XIV thought 

 and those who have ever since been called The Forty. Our admiration 

 of our own masterpieces and our own language does not prevent us 

 from admiring the glories of other nations. We took part in the 

 centennial of Shakespeare; Goethe, Schiller, and Cervantes are popular 

 in our schools. No one can ever enter without feelings of profound 

 respect the church of Santa Oroce in Florence, where around the 

 cenotaph of Dante are collected the tombs of Galileo, of Michel Angelo, 

 of Macchiavelli, of Alfieri, and of Cherubini. 



The eighteenth century was constantly reproaching the academies, 

 and above all the French Academy, which bore the larger part of these 

 attacks because it had borne the larger share of glory, and also 

 because the public could more easily follow its labors, for having elected 

 mediocre men, and for having left men of genius outside its doors. 

 I have in my mind two men who were not members of the French 

 Academy, Descartes and Moliere. Rousseau, whose name is some- 

 times mentioned in connection with the omissions of the academy, was 

 a citizen of Geneva. 



Two errors in a century and a half ! Men, as a rule, do worse than 

 that. The greater part of Descartes's works was written in Latin. 

 The "Discours de la Methode," which is one of the grand monuments 

 of the French language, was known only to a small number of men 

 of science. The great splendor of Descartes's name began only after 

 his death, when it was at last- understood that he had emancipated 

 human reason. Moliere's profession was against him. We would laugh 

 nowadays, and with good reason, at such an objection. It was, however, 



